Industries continually strive for cost effective means to improve customer satisfaction and deliver higher levels of quality. One source of quality problems in a manufacturing facility is mislabeled parts. Where parts are mislabeled, manufacturing on an assembly line may be less efficient and can even cause shutdown of an assembly line. Another source of quality problems is an incorrect number of parts or an incorrect part in a package of parts. Placing too many of a given part in a package will often result in the extra parts being thrown away by the consumer of the parts, and the parts manufacturer losing the money that it cost to produce the discarded part. If too few parts are included in a package or if mislabeled parts are included in a package, then assembly line efficiency may be compromised and assembly line shutdown may even occur. In addition, proper container labeling is important to be sure that a container is shipped to the correct location and that its contents are properly reflected on the label.
To prevent quality problems of this type, manufacturers often employ product identification labels such as bar codes on various parts to allow easy identification of a part and to verify the quantity of a particular part in a package. Unfortunately, such systems are often custom-developed systems that perform a subset of the functions that would be desirable for a computerized shipment error proofing system. Because such systems are often custom-developed, they are often expensive to implement.